Paperwork And The Will Of Capital

Paperwork and the Will of Capital is Taryn Simon's book on the flower arrangements that sit beside political leaders at the signing of treaties and accords, which she rebuilt from archival photographs and photographed as still lifes.

Simon worked from images of historic signings, among them the 1944 Bretton Woods conference that led to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. A botanist identified the flowers in each archival image, and more than 4,000 specimens were shipped to her studio from the Aalsmeer flower auction in the Netherlands. The photographs of the recreated centerpieces are shown with their stories, and the concrete sculptures in the project are designed as presses for botanical collages.

Hatje Cantz published the book in March 2016 with Gagosian: 198 pages, 1,006 photographs, edited by Aliza Watters and designed by Joseph Logan and Simon, with texts by Hanan al-Shaykh, Daniel E. Atha, Kate Fowle and Nicholas Kulish. The publisher lists a Gagosian exhibition in New York, 18 February to 26 March 2016.

Simon was born in New York in 1975. Her website lists The Innocents, Contraband, Birds of the West Indies and An Occupation of Loss among her other projects.